TorgoX's Journal

ZERO HITS TO MY LIVE FILK CYBERCAST ????????

TorgoX — 2006-08-18T00:18:11+00:00

Dear Log,

The interface at use.perl.org is stuck in 1998 and counting. Counting slowly backwards.

So I'm ANKLING this crab shack and moving... ~~here~~!

Please adjust your RSS readers and/or doomsday devices accordingly.

Ebook fun

TorgoX — 2006-08-18T00:04:16+00:00

Dear Log,

After fuming for years about the annoyingly high price and low availability of ebooks, I finally took a stab at buying one of these.

It just got here yesterday and it's really snazzy. It's about the size of a "quality paperback" (and is just a bit heavier, what with batteries and all), it cost about $150 (which I'm justifying as cheaper than two thick tech books), and seems merrily indestructible. Backlit LCD, etc.

And it's just now hitting me that its "little" 64MB memory card can hold not exactly an entire library worth of reading, but certainly a good sized bookcase's worth. Weird.

And I fell asleep last night reading it-- so it IS just like a real book!

Steam heat

TorgoX — 2006-08-17T21:55:47+00:00

Dear Log,

Every sentence of this article is a pullquote.

Murderface Murderface Murderface Murderface

TorgoX — 2006-08-16T07:16:39+00:00

Dear Log,

Death Clock Metalocalypse (α' · β') is like H. R. Giger meets Dr. Katz.

Hœœœuuuurrr

TorgoX — 2006-08-16T07:02:24+00:00

Dear Log,

I'll call this a cri de cœur because that sounds a bit classier than "text-mediated freakout".

φλογιστον!

TorgoX — 2006-08-11T23:43:56+00:00

Dear Log,

«[...] So if you still like to pause to appreciate the action of phlogiston [↯] when you strike a match, you may well be okay with current events. So many, God help us, evidently are.»
--William Gibson

See also: two apes holding up a modern Cavendish-variety banana -- the most absurdly hybridized plant in ethnobotanical history -- and attributing its varietal features to the providence of Jezeus, when he created the world from nothing, six thousand years ago.

What will future Panglosses attribute to Big Daddeh Inna Sky's ancient foresight-- toothpaste? headphones? the hep-A vaccine? Cheez Whiz?

DOMUM

TorgoX — 2006-08-11T02:55:51+00:00

Dear Log,

«Dear Israel and Palestine,

You're so annoying! Why don't you stop fighting and go home?

Oh wait.

Sorry.»
--Eugene Mirman, "Letters to Nouns", on En Garde, Society!

个/卐

TorgoX — 2006-08-10T00:38:38+00:00

Dear Log,

«The lesson I take from this tawdry week in Hollywood is the same one I realized after seeing Britney Spears give her interview to Matt Lauer: No celebrity should appear in public. Ever. Their only contact with the us should be through carefully written statements that are vetted and luminous images that are CGIed. Press releases can edited to sound sane and intelligent; images can be Photoshopped to remove the crows-feet and swastikas.»
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, Landover Baptist Church's embedded reporter in the Cultural Wars

A roadmap for lasting hummus in the Middle East

TorgoX — 2006-08-07T09:53:26+00:00

Dear Log,

As the latest war around-and-about Israel shimmies and shakes along, I am driven back to the question of what went wrong. This is a complex question in general; but in the specific case of the languages of the parties involved in this war, I have a theory.

My theory is that the Middle East's horrible horrible writing systems induce chronic crankiness.

But it was not always so! Both Arabic and Hebrew once used the same script, a script which is clearly superior to either of its modern descendents. But then some sly boots sometime around 0.00 AD (give or take a few centuries) decided to pull some sort of fontographic bait-and-switch: Hebrew changed its lettershapes to the fashionably awful Aramaic style which is only slightly more readable that rows upon rows of Yijing hexagrams, and Arabic switched its lettershapes to context-sensitive Gregg Shorthand scribblese with a forward-looking emphasis on unreadability and pain. This distracts everyone from their duties of 1) making me hummus, and 2) not killing eachother.

And soon after, it was observed that the results of the script changes were bad, but instead of fixing the basic problem, new layers of insulation were added, and each writing system sprouted its own set of endlessly "helpful" vowel points and accents and matres lectionis and doohickii and hummina humminas. You will recognize this "don't bother fixing, just add a wrapper" approach, for this is how we got Clippy, and federalism. And this is what drives people to drink, to rant, to seethe, and to wage ceaseless inter-ethnic border wars.

I don't yet know what to do about these swarms of accents (altho I have a rough idea) -- but I say it's never too late to begin the healing by fixing the basic problem: the alphabet.

Yes, it's time for Hebrew and Arabic to go back to the nice, simple, happy, old-timey Phoenecian letter-shapes. And because this is the Information Age, this changeover can be automated! Using the power of fonts!

Now, I'm no font wizard. But just to start the ball rolling, I have snared a Phoenecian font from somewhere, and overlaid its characters onto the Arabic and Hebrew Unicode code-points, much as the Unicode folks back in the day folded together Japanese and Chinese characters as "Unihan". My resulting font, "Unishem Eshmoon" (actually expressed as two files, for annoying technical reasons) is just a prototype, but already you can see the improvement-- here's the before-and-after, for Hebrew and for Arabic.

It's still experimental, but you can be among the first to jump on this bandwagon and use Phoenecian/Unishem for all your Hebrew and Arabic text-processing needs. And then the cloud of typography-induced ennui will waft away from the Middle East, the missiles will stop flying, the fountains will be turned on, the giant peaches will be brought out, and all those border checkpoints will be replaced with little diners serving really good falafel and hummus.

I dream of that hummus.

Doom doom doom doom DOOM DOOM

TorgoX — 2006-08-07T00:32:49+00:00

Dear Log,

«"My question is: When do you think the human race conclusively lost control over its own destiny? I'd like everyone here to answer, if you don't mind." April produced a handheld notepad. "Please just start anywhere in the circle-here at my left, will do."
Martha Madronich stood up, reluctantly. "Well, I hate to go first, but in answer to your question, um, Professor, I figured we lost it for good sometime during the State of Emergency." She sat down.
Ed Dunnebecke stood up. "I'd have to say 1968. Maybe 1967. If you look at the CO₂ statistics, they had a good chance to choke it all back right there, and they knew full well they were screwing the environment. There was definitely revolutionary potential in the period, and even some political will, but they squandered the opportunity in the drugs and the Marxism and the mystical crap, and they never regained the momentum. Nineteen sixty-eight, definitely-- I've said enough."
Greg Foulks stood up. "I'm with Ed on that one, except there was one last chance in 1989 too. Maybe even as late as '91, after the First Gulf War. Well, that one was actually the Second Gulf War, strictly speaking. But after they blew their big chance at genuine New World Order in '89 and '91, they were definitely trashed. I've said enough." He sat down.
Carol Cooper stood up. "Well, you hear this question quite bit, of course.... Call me romantic, but I always figured 1914. The First World War. I mean, you look at that long peace in Europe before the slaughter, and it looks mediation might have had a chance to stick. And if we hadn't blown most of the twentieth century on fascism and communism and the rest of the ism bullshit, maybe we could have built something decent, and besides, no matter what Janey says, Art Nouveau was the last really truly decent-looking graphic-art movement. I've said enough."
Sam Moncrieff took his turn. "Late 1980s... there were some congressional hearings on global warming that everybody ignored... Also the Montreal Accords on chlorofluorocarbons; they should have passed those with some serious teeth about CO₂ and methane, and things would be a lot better today. Still heavy weather, probably, but not insanely heavy. Late eighties. Definitely. I've said enough."
Rick Sedletter rose. "What Greg said." He sat down.
Peter Vierling stood up. "Maybe it's just me, but I always felt like if personal computers had come along in the 1950s instead of the 1970s, everybody would have saved a lot of time. Well... never mind." He sat down.
Buzzard stood up. "I think they blew it with the League of Nations in the twenties. That was a pretty good idea, and it was strictly pig-stupid isolationism on the part of the USA that scragged that whole thing. Also the early days of aviation should have worked a lot better. Kind of a real wings-over-the-world opportunity. A big shame that Charles Lindbergh liked fascists so much. I've said enough."
Joanne stood up. "Nineteen forty-five. United Nations could have rebuilt everything. They tried too. Some pretty good declarations, but no good follow-through, though. Too bad. I've said enough."
Joe Brasseur stood. "I'm with Joanne on the 1940s thing. I don't think humanity ever really recovered from the death camps. And Hiroshima too. After the camps and the Bomb, any horror was possible, and nothing was certain anymore.... People never straightened up again after that, they always walked around bent and shivering and scared. Sometimes I think I'd rather be scared of the sky than that scared about other human beings. Maybe it was even worth heavy weather to miss nuclear Armageddon and genocide... I wouldn't mind discussing this matter with you later, Professor Logan. But for the meantime, I've said enough."
Ellen Mae Lankton spoke. "Me? If I gotta blame somebody, I blame Columbus. Five hundred thirty-nine years of oppression and genocide. I blame Columbus, and that bastard who designed the repeating rifle. You'd never find an F-6 on any plain that was still covered with buffalo. But I've said this before, and I've said it enough." She sat down.
Ed Dunnebecke stood up. "Funny thing, but I think the French Revolution had a very good chance and blew it. Europe wasted the next two centuries trying to do what the Revolution had right in its grasp in 1789. But once you stumble into that public-execution nonsense... Hell, that was when I knew the Regime had lost it during the State of Emergency, when they started cablecasting their goddamn executions. Give 'em to Madame Guillotine, and the Revolution will eat its young, just as sure as hell... Yeah, put me down for 1789. I've said enough."
Jeff Lowe rose to his feet. "'I don't know very much about history. Sorry."
Mickey Kiehl stood up. "I think we lost it when we didn't go for nuclear power. They coulda designed much better plants than they did, and a hell of a lot better disposal system, but they didn't because of that moral taint from the Bomb. People were scared to death of any kind of 'radiation' even when a few extra curies aren't really dangerous. I'd say 1950s. When the atomic-energy people hid behind the military-security bullshit instead of really trying to make fission work safely for real people in real life. So we got all-natural CO₂ instead. And the CO₂ ruined everything. I've said enough."
Jerry stood up. "I think it's fruitless to look for first causes or to try to assign blame. The atmosphere is a chaotic system; humanity might have avoided all those mistakes and still found itself in this conjunction. That begs the question of when we lost control of our destiny. We have none now; I doubt we ever had any."
"I'm with Jerry on this one," Jane said cheerfully. "Only more so. I mean, if you look back at the glacial records for the Eemian Period, the one before the last set of ice ages, there were no people around to speak of, and yet the weather was completely crazy. Global temps used to soar and dip eight, nine, ten degrees within a single century! The climate was highly unstable, but that was a completely natural state. And then right after that, most of Europe, Asia, and America were covered with giant cliffs of ice that smashed and froze everything in their path. Even worse than agriculture and urbanization! And a lot worse than heavy weather is now. I'm real sorry that we did this to ourselves and that we're in the fix we are in now, but so-called Mother Earth herself has done worse things to the planet. And believe it or not, the human race has actually had things worse."
"Very good," said April Logan. "Thanks very much for that spectrum of opinion by people who ought to know. Since I have no intention of being here when Dr. Mulcahey's forecast is tested, I'll be taking his advice and leaving Oklahoma immediately. I wish you all the very best of luck."»
--from Bruce Sterling's Heavy Weather , written in about 1993, set in 2031

CSS and XML

TorgoX — 2006-08-05T00:27:37+00:00

Dear Log,

«CSS, contrary to a common misconception, has been designed to work with generic XML as well as HTML.»
--"Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL"

Iiiinteresting.

That means that this (styling RSS with CSS) is not just some hack. (As opposed to fancier XSL-based styling like this.)

man2html

TorgoX — 2006-08-02T02:18:49+00:00

Dear All,

Try this advice to turn your manpage browsing from rundown to ravishing: Install man2html and then install this GreaseMonkey script and wham, you've changed ugh to zuh to yum! Kpowza!

I HAVE CHARTS AND GRAPHS WHICH ILLUSTRATE HOW IMPORTANT I AM

TorgoX — 2006-07-29T22:12:07+00:00

Dear Haiku Log,

The population
of Israel is smaller
than Xi'an, China's.

GreaseMonkey script: UsePerlOrg_simplifier.user.js

TorgoX — 2006-07-29T03:23:04+00:00

Dear All,

I have just uploaded a new GreaseMonkey script, UsePerlOrg_simplifier.user.js. It simplifies the design of use.perl.org pages in a few minor ways.

Here's what it does:

Fixes titles of journal entry pages to actually contain the entry's title.
Restyles post-numbered permalinks (like "#34234") to just the permalink icon (§)
Restyles username links to drop the useless user number (i.e., a link to "TorgoX (1933)" becomes "TorgoX")
Hides a bunch of interface elements that I find to be, well, not simple.

I wrote it originally just for myself, but I welcome everyone to try it out and/or modify it as desired.

And if or when you don't like what it does, turn it off.

༺ ඥ ඹ ༻

TorgoX — 2006-07-29T02:58:52+00:00

Dear All,

Today's zhoornawl is brought to you by the Sinhalese letters ඥ (taaluja sanyooga naaksikyaya) and ඹ (amba bayanna)!

Remember kids, these letters are NOT TOYS! Do not attempt to use them unless there's an adult there to help. They are VERY SHARP.

Special Peoples Club

TorgoX — 2006-07-28T00:12:22+00:00

Dear Log,

So it looks like Russia and Turkey, tired of being SASSED by the E.U., might go and form their own little group and maybe they can call it SPECIAL PEOPLES CLUB and meet in an old refrigerator box in the front yard and TOTALLY NOT let the E.U. come in EVEN FOR A MINUTE and there will be comic books and pop and it'll be so cool and it'll be a RULE that nobody gets to talk about those stupid Kurds or Chechens or anything!!!

So, uh, good luck with that.

The first music video featuring H.H. Of Celestial Pasta

TorgoX — 2006-07-26T07:25:39+00:00

Dear Log,

Inhale.

Exhale.

PREPARE.

☛☛ New York DOLLS! ☚☚

Incomparably amusing

TorgoX — 2006-07-25T09:10:55+00:00

Dear Log,

«I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself-- its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson come instantly to mind: Jackson and Cleveland are in the background, waiting to be recalled.»
--HL Mencken

Meanwhile, in another skeezy half-fascist country...

TorgoX — 2006-07-25T08:52:43+00:00

Dear Log,

«This is something that nationalists fail to understand, she says. "It is always us versus them, this or that. Nationalists cannot understand that one can be multilingual, multicultural, cosmopolitan ... without feeling obliged to make a choice between them once and for all."[...]
"On the one hand there are the ones who want Turkey to join the EU, democratise further and become an open society," says Shafak, but on the other "are the ones who want to keep Turkey as an insular, xenophobic, nationalistic, enclosed society. And precisely because things are changing in the opposite direction, the panic and backlash produced by the latter group is becoming more visible and audible."»
--"In Istanbul, a writer awaits her day in court:" Bestselling novelist Elif Shafak is the latest writer to face trial for "insulting Turkishness".

In English at least, there are two very different ways to parse the noun phrase "insulting Turkishness".

Buttons

TorgoX — 2006-07-25T05:10:20+00:00

Dear Log,

«I can't even imagine how awesome things will be in another thousand years, but I bet the remote controls will have at least two more buttons.»
--Something Awful: "The Science Of Fiction"

Athos

TorgoX — 2006-07-24T07:31:03+00:00

Dear Log,

«On arrival in Karyes from the small port of Dahne you are obliged to qualify for a diamontition, a form of Byzantine visa that is written in Greek, dated to the Julian calendar, and signed by four of the secretaries of leading monasteries. This document enables the visitor to stay overnight at any one of the monasteries.»
--"Mount Athos"

Minivans considered antisemitic

TorgoX — 2006-07-24T02:15:25+00:00

Dear Log,

Bad touch!

By this time I guess you've figured out about "Florida".

TorgoX — 2006-07-23T05:21:53+00:00

Dear Log,

"Except in Florida."

Dickens

TorgoX — 2006-07-22T02:39:35+00:00

Dear Log,

«All our readers who were shackled to their desks in grade school and forced to read Oliver Twist or A Tale of Two Cities realize that someone needs to take the fall for the scourge that is Dickens' popular prose styling. That time is now, and the punishment is the UK's expulsion from the G8.»
--"80 Reasons Why Britain Should Be Banned From the G8"

Credit where it's due, eventually.

TorgoX — 2006-07-20T03:56:16+00:00

Dear Log,

I think it's mildly interesting that Comedy Central cancelled Strangers With Candy and even stopped airing it in reruns; but then once Stephen Colbert went and totally burned President Stifler, suddenly Strangers With Candy is a big deal, and the new movie based on it went from being basically unreleasable, to having Comedy Central do a big PR push for it and for the new series DVD box set.

Ahwell, better late than never.

Jesus warmly confirms your every prejudice!

TorgoX — 2006-07-19T21:24:10+00:00

Dear Log,

BUT JEZEUS **TOLD** ME TO SAVE ALL THE BLOBS OF INSENSATE NERVELESS BRAINLESS MINDLESS CELLGLOBS!!

Next up: equal rights for acephalic fetuses. I calls 'em "christocysts"! Am I Greek Orthodox yet?

WHEN MY PAGER VIBRATES I GET A NOSE BLEED

TorgoX — 2006-07-19T07:40:50+00:00

Dear Log,

NO.

The Internet is a series of rubes

TorgoX — 2006-07-19T02:31:57+00:00

Dear Log,

«Is it even possible to navigate the web without a copy of the DSM-IV handy?»
--Dr. David Thorpe of Something Awful

"You people and your slight differences disgust me!"

TorgoX — 2006-07-18T02:29:14+00:00

Dear Log,

DOOM/BOOM

Long_Word_Breaker new version

TorgoX — 2006-07-17T23:53:46+00:00

Dear Log,

Supergreat new version of Long_Word_Breaker.

Superstar Kyosuke Takayama emailed me a patch to make it use the little-known wbr element Before that, this GM script inserted microspaces instead, which was slow and problematic.